The First Moments You've Ever Known
by vacant houses
Summary: IDW comics verse. You are the city's child, born on its streets and left to survive amongst misery and despair. A turtle awakes in an alleyway in New York city with no name, memory or family. He has nothing. He is nothing. A tale of a turtle and his city. Or perhaps, a city and its turtle.


TMNT = Not mine.

This is set in the IDW comics verse. So, unless you've read them you probably won't have much idea what it's about. But this is actually not an AU at all. Inspiration hit pretty damn hard with this thing. It should be no longer than seven chapters. For those people reading it on FF mobile, I have no idea what the heck is up with the formatting, it's all in Bold on my Touch, but fine on my laptop. And in the document editor, it isn't in bold either.

My thanks to Kameterra for betaing this fic. She was a massive help and totally stomped on my soul and ripped the first draft of this apart, sent it back to me and said I could do better. I will try to endeavour to live up to her standards. But she was a huge help seriously and I encourage you all to read her stuff because she is amazing.

For DeeMG. Because all my writing comes back to her one way or the other and I've held off long with letting her have a look at this. I can't deny her fic. And this is distracting me and I have exams to study for. Hopefully my brain will be satisfied and let me study now.

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**The First Moments You've Ever Known**

**Prologue**

This is how it starts.

This is the beginning of your new life and the ending of your old one.

It starts, of course, with pain.

The predator has you; its teeth grip your shell and you cannot escape. Death is so very close; you withdraw into your shell even though you know it is useless. You are at its mercy and the cat can crack your shell at its leisure. You do not feel regret. You are not capable of it. What you are capable of feeling is fear. You are in pain - you are going to die - and all creatures instinctively flinch away from death.

Then you smell the rodent, the rat that has always been there for you, and you smell blood. It is not your own, you can recognise that the predator is wounded. And then you've fallen from its jaws and you can hear the rodent and the cat fighting in the distance away from you.

You try to escape, dragging yourself away. There is something sticking to your shell; it smells sharp and pungent and _wrong_ and you are covered in it. It isn't blood but it seeps into your skin, into you, filling your body with numbness. You can't get away from it but that doesn't mean you won't try.

You crawl. Your progress is far too slow; the cat will catch you easily if it chases off the rat. The fear forces your body onward against inevitability… Then there is the pain.

This is the moment you die.

This is the moment you change.

This is the moment you survive.

This is the moment that defines you_._

The numbness changes; it expands and claims the rest of your body as sensation suddenly returns to you as fierce searing pain. It blazes up and down your body, setting every cell aflame. Your body is on fire, your shell is suddenly too small and everything is being pulled in a different direction all at once. Your body stretches and pulls and contorts and your _shell is too small, just too, too small_-

Bones twist and extend and you wheeze frantically for air and it's just not _enough-_

Your skin is impossibly tight; there's more flesh inside you than it can possibly cover and it grows and it splits and it tears and it breaks and surely, just surely, you are going to _burst-_

_-No air, no air, noairnoairnoairnoair, can't breathe, shell too small-_

The change takes your head, reaches your eyes and you can't even see-

Your beak lengthens and reshapes itself; there's a hole inside your throat and then _something_ grows, it squeezes and coils round the top of your wind-pipe. Your tongue is bigger, trying to keep up with your expanding mouth and suddenly more flexible than ever before. Then your jaw unhinges, air flows down your trachea, and new membranes vibrate for the first time. Your tongue escapes into the air and you scream-

The sound that is released is nothing this world has ever heard before. It's the sound of a dying animal, a newborn monster that cannot speak, rough air scrapping against virgin tissue and escaping as uncontrolled bursts of noise-

_-Too small, too large, too tight, too dark – why haven't you died yet? It hurts, it hurts and it doesn't ever stop-_

It's all that you can hear - the harsh gasp as your lungs fail, the pained cries that escape your new throat and the loud frantic sound of your own heart as it tries to keep you alive while every other part of you dies. You are dying and you are living, all at once and-

_-You cannot possibly still be alive. Not after this, not like this, not when every piece of you is dead-_

But you are. You are so very much alive and breathing.

Your limbs still move, operating on the automatic need to get away and hide even though your own body is the thing that has turned on you. You can't escape from this, won't ever escape this flesh prison because there's only one way to get out and you cling to life far too fiercely to ever let go. Not when you are still alive. But that doesn't stop your brain from panicking, from trying to get you to move because you can't stay here, not after what just happened, what is still happening. But your flippers are longer and all are _wrongwrongwrong-_

Your body does not work properly anymore; everything is new and unfamiliar. _You_ are new and unfamiliar. Unused muscles tense and relax and respond to the scattered signals your brain pulses out uncontrollably. Your front flippers won't work with your back flippers, because the front of your body has been changed whilst the rest of you is still trying to catch up. You drag yourself forward on your front limbs, then collapse as the change finally reaches the back ones and they keep growing longer and longer. Now your limbs match in some strange distorted way. Adrenaline courses through your body and forces you to move -_just move, need to move, get away-_

You cannot escape from this, this new you, this new body. The terror of your new form sends your body into frantic spasms and you flail helplessly on the ground, limbs hopelessly tangled. Your heart thumps inside your plastron, trying to carve its way out your body. Every movement has muscles straining and scraping against each other and they won't work, panic engulfs your primitive mind, you are trapped in a failing body_-_

You try to get up. Dim memory flickers of another life, another _body_ and you push yourself up on all fours, even though your body shakes and rebels every inch of the way. Then you shift your weight back onto your hind flippers and you are up, higher than you have ever been, taller than you have ever been.

Then, the ground reaches up to meet you again.

You are desperate to get away now, away from this place, away from the wrongness, away from your own skin. Your fear forces you up again and again until you are staggering to your feet, smack into the alleyway wall, instinctively keeping away from the bright lights and remaining in the shadows.

You wobble on your feet for half a moment as you pant and gasp for air. One strange flipper reaches out and steadies you against the wall as you try to calm your heavy breathing. Eventually you straighten up and catch sight of an enormous expanse above you. You stumble forth on unsteady legs as something drives you upward. You climb the nearest structure, those faint memories guiding you on the use of your strange new body, and you see…

You see so much…so much that you do not understand. Everything is a thousand times bigger and yet with your new eyes, it is all so much smaller now compared to you. There are noises and sounds and hard concrete rooftops and the harsh smell of smog. And you catch of a glimpse of yourself, of strange two-toed limbs and green skin that is almost luminescent in the moonlight. A new body—strange, unfamiliar… and before you an entire universe you have never known.

But you do know one thing: you do not belong.


End file.
